


Why Nicodemus shouldn't pick on little girls

by Bagge



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Book 10: Small Favor, Gen, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:08:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25784908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bagge/pseuds/Bagge
Summary: Freed from imprisonment by the denarians, Ivy feels a bit cross.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 44





	Why Nicodemus shouldn't pick on little girls

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfic takes place in the aftermath of Small Favor. All characters belong to Jim Butcher.

The tears had dried. The bruises had healed. The terror had subsided. The stains were still there, though. They would not go a away for quite some time.

They were in a safe house in northern Europe. Kincade kept moving them around, and she did not argue. His security measurements were not strictly necessary at this point, but the care behind them was real enough, and that care was too precious for Ivy to dilute in any way. She sat in a small room decorated appropriately for her age and gender in this culture, absentmindedly doodling on a piece of paper. Somewhere in her mind the facts and figures kept flooding in, letters and papers and books and brochures and the endless, mindless tsunami of digital communication that so recently had became a part of her consciousness. She did not pay it much attention, just filed it away for preservation, just another shelf in the endless, dreary library of her soul.

"The archive has been compromised," she whispered for herself. "I am allowed to act in self defense, am I not?" 

"No," she answered herself, in the calm, dry tone that she had come to hate. "The attack is warded off. No immediate threat is present. The archive is intact. No purpose is served in addressing yesterdays perpetrators. The balance of powers is too delicate to allow the disruption the destruction of the main infernal agents would cause. The archive must maintain neutrality."

"He will try again, once he gets an opportunity."

"No such opportunity will be allowed in the future." She grimaced as that. The Archive was right, of course. It always was. 

But the archive was not the only thing that had been wronged. So had she. Ivy felt that was an important distinction to make, if only because so few others seemed to make it.

"If not the destruction," she asked softly, "then how about setting an example?"

The archive hesitated.

"Setting a prejudice, sending a message..."

"The archive is not to be compromised. Future attempts should be discouraged. It would be acceptable to, for that end, setting an example."

An even the dry, neutral tone of the Archive had an edge to it. The archive was many things. Knowledge, power, options, a bloody annoying anchor around the neck (the last one was Ivy's personal description). But at it's core it was a library.

Libraries don't take vandalism lightly.

Ivy smiled. She had been doodling idly as she spoke to herself. She finished her writing and glanced at the door. 

"Kincade...?" She had hardly spoken louder than a whisper, but just a heartbeat later he stormed into the room, rapidly scanning the room and carrying - bless his heart - a gun in each hand that weighted more than her head.

"Could you please run a few errands for me?" she asked once he was satisfied that no immediate threats were in the room, her polite tone of voice not quite managing to hide the smallest of quivers. He accepted the paper with a grunt.

"You're sure?" he asked as he glanced over the names and numbers. Associates, allies and slaves. Safehouses, bank accounts and stashed supplies, two thousand years worth of hoarded resources, all in neat handwriting with little hearts dotting the i:s. All about to be wiped out.

Nicodemus had always taken pride in hiding the records of his exploits, of destroying and falsifying and changing. None of which affected the Archive in any way - except highlighting what parts of his long history and many secretes he cared most to protect.

"I am sure. I will be safe enough, and I trust it will not take you that long." He grunted again, a clear, vindictive tone to it. "It won't." he said. And he left. But he left her one of the guns just "in case".

He really was an old softie.

Ivy turned to her papers again and started to draw. A simple circle in green crayons. A bit childish, she supposed, but right now she didn't quite mind feeling like a child again. There was nothing special with the crayon or the paper. The circle was the roughest of design, but the mental construct she weaved around it was a thing of such complexity that few beings would be able to even comprehend it. 

"Old Nick, old Nick, I know a trick..." she half-sang under her breath. 

A pigeon on the parking lot lifted its head. A ghost, hiding from the sun in its nearby grave, turned uneasy. A phone medium in a nearby town cried out in fright over sudden all too real visions. Laylines hummed as the spell formed by the teenage girl and her simple crayon drawing was carried out over the world.

She knew magic from ages past, forgotten by any know living person. She knew names of entities dormant since the dawn of time. She knew secrets so horrible and so powerful that entire continents had been moved to bury them. She knew where he was hiding. She knew how to get to him.

In a basement in Chicago, orange light glittered in the eye sockets of an old human skull. The lights dimmed for a moment, and a slow whistle could be heard. "...wow," Bob whispered, staring at the unfolding energies.

In Edinburgh, shielded by layer upon layer of wards and charms the Merlin looked up from his workbench, glancing with interest at a strange, spindly silver instrument on a shelf. "An example..." he murmured. 

In a place that wasn't, two old ladies started to cackle in spiteful joy. "An example?" wheezed Mother Summer. "An example." answered Mother Winter. 

At an airport far away the knight Sanya suddenly started to grin. "пример," he said to no one in particular and went to change his ticket.

In another city, at another continent, Nickodemus was running. He had gone through a dosen aliases and safe houses already, but he knew that she would catch up with him. Soon. In his mind he was rushing through contingency plans and security measurements in furious speed, but he knew they would amount to little once she found him. Still, if he could only keep his distance for a few days...

On the wall behind him, a security camera turned and followed him with it's unblinking glass eye.


End file.
